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Action flicks these days aren’t dominated anymore by square-jawed, one-note actors like Van Damme, Schwarzenegger, and Statham (they aren’t even mostly the domain anymore of men, but that’s an article for another day). In recent years, the leading men of the best “actioners,” as they’re known in Variety-speak, are heavy-hitting thespians like Liam Neeson and Denzel Washington, whose acting chops elevate the genre to a whole new level. In The Equalizer movies, for example, Denzel brings compelling depth to a character that would be one-dimensional in a lesser talent: a chivalric hero in a world without knights.
The Equalizer 3 opened in theaters last week, and I was in one of them to check out the latest installment of the franchise, happily contributing a few dollars toward the $42 million the film raked in domestically over the long Labor Day weekend.
If you’re unfamiliar with the movies, in the first Equalizer outing in 2014, Denzel (and let’s face it, he has reached the stratosphere of one-name celebrity, like Sting or Madonna) plays Robert McCall, a quiet, mysterious loner whose unassuming demeanor belies his lethal special ops training. Living like a monk, as one baffled character puts it, while working nine-to-five at a Home Depot-type store, the widowed McCall, a retired assassin from “the Agency,” flies under everyone’s radar.
McCall confesses in that film that he had once done things that he wasn’t proud of, but that he had promised his now-deceased wife that “I would never go back to being that person.” And indeed, he now lives by such an honorable code that he chides acquaintances about character failings like swearing and eating junk food. But he is supportive and inspiring as well: he helps coach a hapless coworker to prepare for a better-paying job as a security guard, for example, and he encourages the dream of a singing career for a young Russian call girl he has befriended at the local coffee shop, where he hangs out and reads during sleepless nights. Coming to the aid of this damsel in distress brings down the wrath of ruthless Russian sex traffickers – but they, like everyone else, underestimate McCall.
McCall is also a big reader, working his way through a list of the 100 Best Books. At one point the call girl sees him with a new book and asks what it’s about. “It is about a guy who is a knight in shining armor,” McCall replies, “except he lives in a world where knights don’t exist anymore.”
Though the title goes unmentioned, it’s clear even from this short description that the classic he is reading is Don Quixote, the massive novel by Miguel de Cervantes published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615. The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha (its full title) is considered the grandest monument of literature in Spanish and an extraordinarily influential work of modern Western literature. In 2002, 100 major writers from 54 countries voted Don Quixote the best work of fiction in the world. It is sometimes called the first novel, and has been translated into more languages than any book but the Bible.
The book was written and set in an era after the high point of chivalry in the Middle Ages; the knightly class in which that ideal flourished had largely died out by Cervantes’ time. But Don Quixote was a man so obsessed with tales of knightly heroism from that bygone era that he made it his mission to “travel the four corners of the earth in search of adventures on behalf of those in need, this being the office of chivalry and of knights errant.” Through him, he believed, chivalry would be reborn.
A knight errant, by the way, specifically refers to a figure that appears often in chivalric literature (either medieval or from later periods like the Romantic or Victorian eras), a knight who is not beholden to any feudal lord but who wanders the land (hence the Latin-based word “errant”) in search of injustices to make right.
The point of the Don Quixote reference in the movie, of course, is that McCall (whose name, of Scottish and Irish origin, means “powerful in battle”) is himself a knight errant – albeit not in shining armor – in a world in which chivalry is scorned by men and women alike as outdated and sexist, and selfless knights are in short supply. Even the cops in The Equalizer are corrupt, which infuriates McCall; after delivering a serious beatdown to a couple of them, he lectures them about having dishonored their badge and having failed “to protect and to serve” – a motto which could easily have been derived from the medieval chivalric code. That code required that knights defend the defenseless, and – as one 19th century writer put it – “to everywhere and always be the champion of the Right and the Good against evil and injustice.”
In the Equalizer sequels, McCall continues to unleash righteous violence on unrepentant villains (he always offers them the opportunity to “do the right thing” before delivering an executioner’s justice). In the newest installment, McCall finds himself in an Old World coastal town in Southern Italy, where the locals’ sense of community and hospitality gradually erodes his wary, solitary nature. When a pack of drug-trafficking mafia animals arrives to terrorize the helpless innocents of the village he has begun to consider home, McCall grants the interlopers one polite request to take their dirty business elsewhere – before unleashing hell.
By contrast, consider another film franchise about a retired assassin: the John Wick films starring Keanu Reaves as a weary contract killer who wants to wash his hands of the guild of assassins to which he has belonged. These killers too live by a code, but not a chivalric one; the only morality of the Wick films is “honor among thieves,” because the assassins are all bound by a set of traditional rules that determine how and where the killers are allowed to conduct their lucrative business.
Wick is no knight errant in search of innocents to protect; on the contrary, in film after film (there are four so far), his motivation is either revenge (e.g., for the killing of his dog in the first film) or simply survival as he becomes the target of the underworld of assassins he has quit. There quite simply is no other moral motivation or worldview in the Wick films. The franchise has a very slick, stylish look and is set in the stylized world of a secret international society, which is entertaining on a shallow level, but it cannot compete with the Equalizer films in terms of emotional and moral depth.
The aging Don Quixote may have famously tilted crazily at windmills, hallucinating them to be dragons, but Robert McCall, in each film of The Equalizer trilogy, puts himself between very real evil and the innocents he feels compelled to defend. He does it because “to protect and to serve,” at risk of his own life, is in his nature. At least one critic has complained that the first Equalizer movie’s “sense of good and evil is a little too clear cut,” but in a jaded entertainment world too often awash in moral ambiguity and equivalence, it’s refreshing – and yes, inspiring – to spend a couple of hours in a movie theater with a character who harks back to the uncompromising, selfless heroism of a bygone ideal.
Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior.
“The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha (its full title) is considered the grandest monument of literature in Spanish and an extraordinarily influential work of modern Western literature. In 2002, 100 major writers from 54 countries voted Don Quixote the best work of fiction in the world.”
Of course the moderns would vote Don Quixote so highly. It’s one of the most MALEVOLENT, anti-man, anti-hero, novels in history. All it does throughout is mock and laugh at man and his aspirations. Its theme is man is a stupid fool who should stay home and milk the cows. Such a stupid, senile, foolish, delusional, creature as man has no business thinking he could ever be actually noble or heroic. Of course the moderns would love that theme.
Don Quixote is as stupid, self-deceiving, and senile as Joe Biden. Yep, it’s the modern hatred of man, anti-heroism, cynicism, and nihilism that would place a Don Quixote/Joe Biden in the place where once such giants as Washington, Madison, Jefferson, and Lincoln dwelled.
As far as I can see the article is about The Equalizer, not Donny Quixote.
In this day and age no one really cares about the Don anymore, but this post is just another of your pathetic attempts to make people think you actually have something of substance to say.
You don’t.
I didn’t even recognize the writings as being THX’s until you pointed it out.
Ironically, he sounded to me more like a Christian wailing against the bulk of post-modern fiction.
Since it IS THX, I can only assume–were I to actually read Don Quixote–that it must be a work in which Christianity or Christian morality is glamorized.
I am sure I can find plenty of Quixote on the Internet Archives. So I guess after all these years of willfully ignoring it, I had best check it out. See what upset THX so much, in the hopes that Quixote will prove to be a good piece of classical Christian literature… 😉
So funny! I began reading it last night the same reason you give.
That was a pretty rude comment, buddy.,
Was it directed at Tapson or that weirdo, THX.
Denzel didn’t need affirmative action either.
Not a big fan of blackwashing.
The original equalizer was a white guy played by a British actor.
Blacks need to stop co-opting white role models/heroes.
Create your own heroes, quit stealing ours.
So everlovin sick of this crap.
That’s the version I want see.
Oral tradition is the sole means of preservation of all cultures without writing. Being without God for thousands of years, they sank into the deepest depravities of which humanity is capable, and their histories are mostly shameful (as we all become without God).
When western man began to explore beyond Europe, he encountered these primitive savages. Western man is uniquely and notoriously curious, and he set out to understand these primitive tribes, learn their language and history and commit it to writing. Without contact with westernkind, these people have very little in the way of stories that inspire or much of anything other than subsistence hunting, etc.
But westernkind is not limited to the white race that created and sustains it – and never has been. The lone savior of distinct moral character would universally resonate, because man is the image and glory of God even in the most primitive tribes. And salvation is ultimately God’s business.
Denzel Washington is not usurping a white role model. If he were to play King Edward, then yes, that would be usurpation. But the generic lone savior of excellent moral character – this is universal.
They don’t just do that in movies, they do it in comic books, too. It’s revolting. Just create black characters, don’t assassinate white ones.
Years ago, twenty plus years ago? My wife noticed that there were no longer any heroes, everyone was out for revenge. When we were kids even none religious people taught children that revenge is a base motive, then the sixties changed all that.
Righteous revenge is beautiful, though.
“Don Quixote” is one of the most malevolent novels out there, it presents man as a self-deceived fool, to be mocked and to be laughed at.
It’s no wonder the moderns love it.
God forbid you would have something to say about the actual protagonist in the film series. Instead you fall back on the straw man argument because you have no idea what being a hero is or means.
My kind of hero is Howard Roark, Joh Galt, Hank Rearden, Dagny Taggart.
They don’t reject this world as a fallen world, they don’t reject being flesh and blood and mortal human beings and die on a cross to escape to a super-natural, fantasy utopia. They stay on earth and fight for their life on earth, liberty on earth, and happiness on earth.
They enjoy sex so they don’t die lifelong, ascetic, virgins. Sex isn’t disgusting to them, but part of man’s glory, so no need for virgin births.
They don’t believe in sacrifices but in profit and gain; spiritual, emotional, and material. Because they realize that they are body and spirit, united, inseparable, indivisible. They neither die on a cross for others, nor do they expect others to sacrifice themselves for them. They live as productive traders, trading value for value, not as altruist sacrificial animals.
Good for you. Such an intellectual.
They don’t live at all because they aren’t real. Characters in books no one reads anymore. Is it any wonder that you are such a daisy living on your NYC apartment?
Christians do not “reject this world as fallen,” but take stewardship of it, improve it, enjoy it and endeavor to pass the results on to the next generation.
Christians know we are “flesh and blood mortal beings,” and we know there is no utopia outside of the rule of Christ. Nevertheless, any rule that endeavors to approximate the law of God will be blessed (but not perfect) for all who live under it.
Jesus (not Christians) died on the cross, not as an escape to utopia, but as the expression of God’s salvation of the whole world and in fulfillment of the promise to Abraham to bless all nations through him. Christians who have died on crosses are martyrs killed by people like you, THX, who unreasonably hate and are threatened by them.
Christians enjoy sex more than those who practice it in contravention of its purposes. They are not obsessed with talking incessantly about it. Look at all the babies we have! We like sex a lot.
Christian societies recognize that sacrifice is necessary for profit, and create cultures in which profit can be safely made and preserved for the families who create it. This is in stark contrast to the socialist / communist / totalitarian regimes that reject God.
Your anti-Christian screeds are never based upon knowledge, but on fantasies you nurture in your slavish brain.
Challenge: Find one quote in the Bible that supports any allegation you make against Christians. Bring it.
Let’s see, you want me to give you a quote from Holy Scripture so you can interpret that quote whichever way you please? So you can interpret that quote not, LITERALLY, but in the most rational and reasonable way possible?
Anyone can do that, even an atheist can do that.
In our modern age anyone can interpret the Bible any way they please and they will not be burned at the stake, excommunicated, lashed at the post, put in stocks, or put in a dungeon for heresy or blasphemy, why is that?
Because the fact is that you modern Christians are free to interpret Holy Scripture any way you please due NOT to Christianity but to the Aristotelian Renaissance and the Aristotelian Age of Enlightenment.
Thomas Aquinas separated faith from reason, theology from philosophy, the natural from the supernatural, and put reason in the ascendancy over faith. Releasing the West from the supremacy of faith over reason. Before Aquinas reason was the mere handmaiden of faith, if the conclusions of reason contradicted the claims of faith, reason was rejected and silenced.
Christianity is no longer taken seriously by the vast majority of Christians. That there are no Christian theocracies anywhere in the West today is the proof. No, that is not because Christianity has evolved and developed to become more rational over millennia but because reason is in the ascendancy and diluted the power of Christianity over the Christian mind. Today’s modern Christian goes to church on Sunday then drives his Cadillac to the golf course and has himself all the worldly pleasure he can get. That’s not serious Christianity, that’s Christianity extremely diluted by secularism and worldliness.
The Amish are the closest thing to serious Christianity there is in America today. And even the Amish are heavily influenced by Aristotelian secularism.
THX 1138…
How a person acts doesn’t determine who is a Christian… even satanic worshiping muslims consider the words of Christ Jesus a great way to behave…
Thus… you criticizing how a person acts after going to church… is a lousy example…
Likewise, on the flip side… assuming the Amish are the best acting Christians is another poor example…
No one earns their Salvation and no one is Saved by acting like a good person… or acting like Jesus…
A Christian is someone who acknowledges Christ Jesus as the Son of God and has accepted Him as their Savior…
I am asking you to back up your assertions with evidence — something other than your subjective opinion. You have a STRONG opinion, but you are unable to back it up with evidence / words.
My throat is exposed and I have put the sword of the Bible in your hand, THX. Be a man and finish me off. I have done this with your own words and Objectivism quotes that expose the weaknesses of the foundation of your religion.
Your objection is that words are ultimately not meaningful because they can be twisted. This is like saying every gun is useless because we can miss our target. Every book ever written uses words, including the Bible. My assertion is that words are powerful communicative tools, and twisted words are as easily discerned as a bullet hole in paper that misses the center.
By the way, the Greeks were without God for millennia. Despite all their great contributions, their pederasty and sodomy and other depravities were widely practiced and accepted.
To Kynarion Hellenis,
You haven’t exposed any weakness in Objectivism, EXISTENCE EXISTS, A is A, a thing exists and to exist is to have identity, to be is to be a specific, identifiable entity, that is an axiomatic fact. It is an AXIOM of perception, observation, and man’s rational understanding of reality.
You cannot, using reason, say, “Well yes, existence does exist that is self-evident, but everything that exists, exists because this consciousness I call Yahweh made it exist”.
Such a claim is unwarranted, unnecessary, and unprovable. Using reason we can point to matter, energy, that which exists, and rationally explain matter and energy. But what is Yahweh? Where is Yahweh? Show me this consciousness that can create existence simply through thought. You can’t, not using reason, Yahweh has to be taken on FAITH, not reason.
The identity and rational definition of consciousness, ITS REFERENT IN REALITY, is that consciousness is an attribute of certain living organisms that PERCEIVES existence but does NOT CREATE existence. The religionist takes this rational concept and reverses it, claiming that there is a certain kind of consciousness that CREATES existence, destroying consciousness’ actual definition, and the religionist never identifies the referent in reality he calls “Consciousness that creates existence”.
“An axiomatic concept is the identification of a primary fact of reality, which cannot be analyzed, i.e., reduced to other facts or broken into component parts. It is implicit in all facts and in all knowledge. It is the fundamentally given and directly perceived or experienced, which requires no proof or explanation, but on which all proofs and explanations rest.
The first and primary axiomatic concepts are “existence,” “identity” (which is a corollary of “existence”) and “consciousness.” One can study what exists and how consciousness functions; but one cannot analyze (or “prove”) existence as such, or consciousness as such. These are irreducible primaries. (An attempt to “prove” them is self-contradictory: it is an attempt to “prove” existence by means of non-existence, and consciousness by means of unconsciousness.)” – Ayn Rand
Your’e right about sex. It’s much more enjoyable when you’re in love.
It’s a bit bestial when you just do it out of heat.
I miss my ex girlfriend so much.
Gee, you forgot Spock….another imaginary character. It’s really good to know that Ayn Rand wrote pornography, since you are obsessed with sex.
This posts truly points out that your are not in your right mind….ever. It is clear that you think these characters in a book actually lived, that they enjoyed sex, that they didn’t believe in sacrifice and that they hated altruism….all the things that ironically you believe and have assigned to them. They aren’t real. You live in a world of fantasy.
My heroes actually lived and accomplished great things. Charles Martel, King Sobieski, George Washington, Abe Lincoln, George Patton, Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Tallis, Palestrina. What they all had in common was sacrifice, altruism, a desire to make the world a better place through their particular talent, something you would know nothing about.
What they never did was break into an Randian soliloquy, and bore every one to death on a daily basis. What they never did was tell everyone how to live. What they never did was belittle Christianity.
What have you ever really accomplished in your life? What is the great talent, other than copying and pasting the works of others and revising history, that you possess. You are small man who believes he is better than everyone because you read a few books. Your heroes are simply figments of your imagination that you project your various obsession onto.
This post is going into the THX archives. It’s a THX classic.
George Washington fought for HIS freedom and HIS rights SELFLESSLY — for YOU?!
You actually are so morally blinded by altruism and your warped sense of what selfishness actually is that you dare to actually think the Founders were thinking of YOU when they risked THEIR lives fighting for THEIR OWN freedom, THEIR own property, THEIR OWN actual loved ones, and THEIR OWN liberty?!
The Founders were NOT thinking of YOU, nor the rest of the human race, when they fought for THEIR OWN freedom — not yours!
The implicit motivation for a man to fight for freedom is SELFISHNESS. A man that has no self-esteem, no pride, so self-regard, no love for his life, no love for HIS loved ones, no love for HIS family, will not fight to defend what is HIS!
Mozart did not write his music for you, the primary and fundamental motivation for Mozart was his own SELFISH happiness, pleasure, gain, and profit by writing HIS music for HIS OWN benefit! He wasn’t thinking of you at all! Primarily and fundamentally Mozart wrote for Mozart, that others also gained by his RATIONAL SELFISHNESS is a consequence of his rational selfishness, not his primary motivation.
“If a man dies fighting for his own freedom [and the freedom of those he SELFISHLY loves], it is not a sacrifice: he is not willing to live as a slave; but it is a sacrifice to the kind of man who’s willing. If a man refuses to sell his convictions, it is not a sacrifice, unless he is the sort of man who has no convictions….
If you renounce all personal desires and dedicate your life to those you love, you do not achieve full [sacrifice]: you still retain a value of your own, which is your love. If you devote your life to random strangers, it is an act of greater [sacrifice]. If you devote your life to serving men you hate—that is the greatest of [sacrifice] you can practice.” – Ayn Rand
I never said my heroes did anything for me. I guess I have to repeat what I said since you incapable of reading it without imprinting your own warped interpretation:
“My heroes actually lived and accomplished great things. Charles Martel, King Sobieski, George Washington, Abe Lincoln, George Patton, Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Tallis, Palestrina. What they all had in common was sacrifice, altruism, a desire to make the world a better place through their particular talent, something you would know nothing about.”
The word “me” is not in the text. However I am glad Abe Lincoln held the country together during the Civil War. I am glad Washington had the military talent to defeat the Brits. I am glad Patton had the sones to defeat the Nazis in western Europe. I am glad Reagan gave us 30 years of economic success and Conservatism. And I am glad Trump exposed the swamp and people like you for who they are. I am glad great composers write music that makes for great art. I am also glad you have never had the opportunity to talk with any of the people you say were only working for themselves.
One thing we can be certain of is Washington and the Founders were certainly not thinking of you. You would have been tossed out of the 1st Constitutional Convention as soon as you opened your mouth. It’s clear you are incapable of working with anyone.
Now back to you. You are obviously jealous of achievement, since you have never achieved anything of note. If you had you would pounding us about the head and shoulders with your great accomplishments. Fortunately we are spared at least that.
All you have are imaginary heroes. They can’t really accomplish anything because they don’t exist.
But hey if you want think that the founding fathers thought only of themselves go right ahead. If they had been they wouldn’t have founded a country for the future. They wouldn’t have written a constitution. A future you delight in denigrating every day.
It is obvious the only thing you care about is you. What country we would have if 300 million Americans thought like you. Every man for himself. Not even women and children first. Toss them overboard. Thank God we are not like you. And we never will be like you.
By the way, your latest post to me is another keeper that I can throw up in your face the next time you go off the rails.
I don’t get the purpose of this article…
Has FPM reverted to… A Night At the Movies? Roger Ebert? Entertainment Tonight? Oprah’s Book Club?
I can think of at least 1000 other issues taking place in this world to write about, rather than reviewing a movie…
So… let’s have one article about “Killing Hollywood” on one day… then have another promoting Hollywood the next day…
“Art (including literature) is the barometer of a culture. It reflects the sum of a society’s deepest philosophical values: not its professed notions and slogans, but its actual view of man and of existence….
Art is the indispensable medium for the communication of a moral ideal . . . This does not mean that art is a substitute for philosophical thought: without a conceptual theory of ethics, an artist would not be able successfully to concretize an image of the ideal. But without the assistance of art, ethics remains in the position of theoretical engineering: art is the model-builder . . .” – Ayn Rand
“An entirely different view of man dominated the medieval Christian civilization. Man, according to Augustine, is “crooked and sordid, bespotted and ulcerous.” Medieval mystics regarded man as an evil creature whose body is loathsome because it is material, and whose mind is impotent because it is human. Hating man’s body, they said that pleasure is evil, and virtue consists of renunciation. Hating this earth, they said that it is a prison where man is doomed to pain, misery, calamity. Hating life, they said that death and escape into some other dimension is all that man could—and should—hope for.
Man as a helpless and depraved creature, was the basic theme of medieval sculpture until the Gothic period, whether he was shown being pushed into Hell or accepted into Heaven….
The history of sculpture is a history of man’s view of man—of his body and spirit, i.e., of his metaphysical nature. Every culture, from the most primitive to the most civilized, has held an estimate of man and has wanted to see the objectified reality of that estimate. Man has been the predominant subject of sculpture, whether he was judged to be an object of pride or of shame, a hero or a sinner.
A metaphysical view of man is projected by the manner in which the sculptor presents the human figure. In the process of shaping clay or wood or stone into the form of a body, the sculptor reveals his answer to three questions: Is man a being of free will or is he a helpless puppet of fate?—Is he good or evil?—Can he achieve happiness or is he doomed to misery?—and then mounts his answer on a pedestal and puts it in a tomb or in a temple or over the portal of a church or in a living room in New York City.” – Mary Ann Sures
Are you saying… this article is “Art” or… that the movie is “Art”???
Personally… I don’t believe “Reading is Fundamental”… most everyone that I’ve ever met that’s spent a lot of time reading books, novels, etc… have a warped idea of what is life.
Additionally… I don’t believe in “Keeping Kids First”…
The combination of these two philosophies have ruined society.
Considering you hate what constitutes art, you really do have a lot of mental issues to deal with. It is no wonder your heroes aren’t real. It gives you the excuse to waste your life away doing and accomplishing nothing.
You can’t even put together your own thoughts on anything. Just the words of others. Mary Ann Sures….really? Who?
Mary Ann Sures is an Ayn Rand acolyte. I believe she wrote articles for “The Objectivist,” aping Rand’s aesthetic theories.
How much do I not care about Sures. Just another Objectivist loser.
“The Equalizer?” I never heard of the series but it sounds good. I’m going to watch it. I’ll let you know what I think.
You should watch “Florida Man.” What a great show.